Sunday Reflections: #MeToo inspired a movement for 2017

BY TRACEY O'SHAUGHNESSY REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

As the year was drawing to a close, Merriam-Webster named “feminism” 2017’s word of the year.

The American dictionary publisher said the word, which it defines as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” barely inched out “complicit” as the word whose definition the most number of users sought.

Meanwhile, Dictionary.com named “complicit,” which it defined as “choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, especially with others,” as its word of the year, noting that it saw a 300 percent increase in searches for the word this year compared to last.

And over at Time Magazine, editors named the “silence breakers” of the “#MeToo social media movement as the most influential “person” of 2017.

How very much these words have in common.

Complicit is of course a legal word and therefore carries all kinds of freighted litigious connotations. But it is also a moral word, one that straddles the theological boundaries of sins of omission and commission, or what we did and what we failed to do.

Whatever image one conjures with the word feminism – whether it’s shrieking termagants with bad hygiene or conscientious professionals just looking for an equal shot – it’s becoming clear that the word encompasses a degree of anguish and resentment that women have only now felt comfortable sharing.

Sexual abuse allegations that began with a single debauched Hollywood producer have accelerated into every corner of our culture, from politics to media to business and performing arts. “Feminism,” this term that could seem so shrewish to many who believed the “gender wars” had been won, now seems less shrill than beseeching.

What the “silence breakers” want is not to induce shame or settlements, but human dignity. “#MeToo” may emerge next year as a legislative call to arms, but it began as a sorority of victims, haunted and guilt-ridden, looking less to accuse than to heal.

In the same way that the Black Lives Matter movement focused the country’s attention on a harrowing mistreatment of young black men last year, the “#MeToo” crusade underlines how objectified women continue to be viewed. At their heart, both campaigns are wrestling with dehumanization. After the “Black Lives Matter” movement caught steam, some critics carped that “All Lives Matter,” which is true, of course, and exactly the point.

When technology allowed viewers to witness what blacks had been decrying for years – the shooting of unarmed black men – many in the white community, and I was lamentably one, were gobsmacked. But African-Americans had been asserting this reality for some time.

When Harvey Weinstein was revealed as a predatory libertine, many in his industry, including women, said his behavior had been an “open secret.” When women complained, they were told by “more than one agent,” The New York Times reported, “that’s just Harvey being Harvey.”

So, too with the Metropolitan Opera, whose eminent conductor James Levine now stands accused by four men of sexual assault. Not only had rumors circulated about Levine’s behavior since at least 1968, but the organization reportedly knew of a 2016 police inquiry about abuse. The Metropolitan Opera, which has since severed ties with Levine, has hired an outside law firm to investigate.

Similarly, when former New York Times editor Jill Abramson – who co-authored a book about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill harassment case, witnessed former Times’ Washington bureau chief Mike Oreskes’ unwanted sexual advances on a young female aide, she did nothing. National Public Radio suspended Oreskes earlier this year after reports from two women who said that, while working at the Times, Oreskes abruptly kissed them on the lips and stuck his tongue in their mouths.

Abramson subsequently confirmed the allegation to The Washington Post and said she regrets not taking action. “If I had to do it again, I would have told him to knock it off,” she told the Post. “Maybe confronting him would have somehow stopped him from doing it to another woman. I don’t really feel it was in a gray area in retrospect. I should have stopped him.”

Is it any wonder “complicit” ranks right up there with “feminism” as the word of the year?

These were outrages hidden in plain sight, not just by men, but by women.

In a year riven with social and political animosity, in which our most boorish impulses have been given free reign, it is worth asking what force will lead us out of this chronic devaluation of human dignity.

Otherwise, we will be here again next year, wondering just how complicit we were in staying silent.